ALBANY, N.Y. (March 22, 2007) -- The University at Albany will host a lecture by University of California at Berkeley philosophy professor John R. Searle, author of Mind, a Brief Introduction. Searle will present, "What is Language," at 4 p.m. March 26 in the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the journal Intercultural Pragmatics and the Departments of Anthropology, Communication, Educational Theory& Practice, Languages, Literatures & Cultures, and Philosophy, the School of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of the Provost.

Searle is a leading figure nationally and internationally in the development of speech act theory, which merges the study of language with the study of social action. He is also widely known for his critique of computer modeling of mind and language. He has been outspokenly critical of many cognitive and computer scientists' claims that a computer program should be able to capture what is essential in language use.

He is the author of 17 books including Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (1969) and Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (1983). His most recent books are Rationality in Action (2001); Consciousness and Language (2002); and Mind, a Brief Introduction (2004).

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